Grid-based or table-based arrays of information, along with instructional systems in learning environments that harness the internet, intranets, databases, courses, teaching units, and lexicons are growing at an explosive rate. Most such content can be “structured” into scope and sequence arrays that connote either a sense of developmental “progress” (a progression of steps leading from more elementary to more advanced or complex steps) or can be structured to represent a range or spectrum of information, not unlike a color spectrum or a bell curve. These “progression” or “spectral” informational arrays can be quite large and can be considered multi-dimensional in that information or steps at any one level may have sub-component steps or elements, which themselves have sub-steps.
Current use or display of such arrays is accomplished through either: 1) a print format, such as a book or chart, or 2) a computer screen displaying charts or graphs such as a spreadsheet or an interactive digital row-column display. However, often such content has multiple layers or relationships that are difficult to represent. For example, a book or chart does not provide an easy access to the content of a large array. Also, while information can be displayed on computer screens as spreadsheets in a row-column manner, and can algorithmically relate one cell or item of information to another cell(s) or spreadsheet or website, such actual relational aspects are usually the custom result of the spreadsheet's user and not intrinsic to the design of the spreadsheet as a spreadsheet typically comes as an empty software solution without content. Spreadsheets provide access to and management of fixed-size arrays, but not to variable-sized, N-dimensional arrays.
One approach for displaying and managing such arrays is to easily expand and contract the display of and access to layers of related content, allowing the user to view and interact with additional content within a limited-size display screen on a device. However, expansion and contraction of screen objects is typically associated with overlapping, and thus obscuring, surrounding screen objects.
With conventional data display, navigation and interaction, the user can be presented with an array that vastly exceeds the displayable area of their device. Further, none of the existing conventional methods intrinsically provide a method for the user to link or navigate to sub-Steps related to the cell (e.g., an instructional step or skill), link to resources of other related cells within the array (e.g., related skills), capture the user's rating of the cell content or credit/score on achievement/mastery relative to the cell's content, or create “social” links to other users based on the pertinence or applicability of the cell's content, comments by other users on the cell's content, or the user's score relative to the cell's content.
Social networks, such as Facebook®, MySpace® and Linkedln®, have proliferated and are now part of the global culture. However, such networks typically rely on “freely-associated” or “open” content wherein a user creates his/her personal content on any subject, without a “structure” or “progression” of content implied or provided by the underlying social-networking system (to which other users could attach their content). One of the major appeals of such social networks is the creation of “open” content and messages. But one aspect of the “open” approach that is missing is a system for using “default” structured content to spawn social interest and interaction, with such content providing an underlying structured knowledge to which users can edit or attach their own content, comments, share interests and create a network based on the theme of specific steps or topics or domains of knowledge.